To listen to Michael Johnson inform it, observe is the best sport you don’t but know you like.
That’s “track” with out the “field,” by the best way, for causes we’ll get to in a bit. As a result of for now, Johnson, a 16-time world and Olympic dash champion and nine-time world record-holder, is specializing in the half of the game he is aware of finest.
And it wants assist.
“There’s been a big void in the marketing of track and the profile of track over the last several decades,” he mentioned. “It’s popular at a very high level every four years during the Olympics, then falls out significantly in between. So the vision is to elevate the sport to this sort of level of UFC, Formula One and tennis and golf and other individual sports.
“Now just seems like the right time to do it.”
Johnson believes Grand Slam Monitor, a sequence of 4 three-day meets wherein 48 of the quickest women and men on the earth race for $12.6 million in prize cash, looks like the correct solution to do it. The sequence, which was unveiled this week, is modeled after tennis’ 4 grand slam occasions and can open in Kingston, Jamaica, in early April. It would additionally embody stops in Miami (Could 2-4), Philadelphia (Could 30-June 1) and Los Angeles (June 27-29), the place it is going to be headquartered.
The main focus will probably be on head-to-head competitors and never instances, so there will probably be no rabbits or pacing lights. Every athlete is required to run in one among six teams — brief sprints, lengthy sprints, brief hurdles, lengthy hurdles, brief distance, lengthy distance — in races starting from 100 to five,000 meters. Athletes will compete in two occasions in every three-day competitors and should run in all 4 meets, with the highest performer in every group profitable $100,000 every Slam. Eighth place is price $10,000.
Among the many athletes who’ve already dedicated to the tour are four-time Olympic champion Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, 1,500-meter gold medalist Cole Hocker, two-event bronze medalist Grant Fisher, Brazil’s Alison dos Santos, a world champion within the 400-meter hurdles, and Olympic champions Quincy Corridor (400 meters), Marileidy Paulino (ladies’s 400 meters) and Masai Russell (ladies’s 100-meter hurdles).
“What you’re witnessing right now is the greatest collection of personalities we’ve seen in the sport in quite some time,” mentioned Johnson, 57, who has spent the previous 22 years working as a TV commentator for the BBC. “You think about the [Usain] Bolt era and it was only him. Now we have multiple amazing personalities.”
Cole Hocker of the USA celebrates after profitable the gold medal within the males’s 1500 meters on the 2024 Summer season Olympics.
(Ashley Landis / Related Press)
However between Olympic Video games, these personalities develop into practically invisible, and that leaves the game racing to rebuild curiosity amongst informal followers each 4 years.
“What’s critical today is storytelling. Fans want to connect with athletes,” Johnson mentioned. “They want to understand the athletes’ journey. They want to understand how that athlete got here and what their struggles were. They want to understand just who that person is.
“That is absolutely built into our league and built into our relationship with our athletes.”
It’s additionally why Grand Slam Monitor has no subject occasions, a choice that robs the circuit of a number of the sport’s most attention-grabbing athletes, amongst them shot putter Ryan Crouser and pole vaulter Armand Duplantis. The issue, Johnson mentioned, is subject occasions include a number of makes an attempt of a given throw or bounce, with the winner decided after every competitor has exhausted all their tries. That’s not practically as dramatic because the mano a mano competitors on the observe, the place some races are over in 10 seconds, the winner determined by an eyelash.
“One of the problems we’ve had with the sport and one of the reasons why the sport doesn’t break through outside the Olympics is because we’re trying to fit the Olympics into one day,” Johnson mentioned. “That may have worked back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but it no longer works. Fewer and fewer fans actually have the ability to consume and understand the nuances of four different types of jumps, four different types of throws and then sprinting and long-distance running.
“A single narrative is critical today. So being able to storytell around a singular narrative of the fastest athletes in the world is what we’re focused on because that’s the battle that we feel like we can win.”
That’s a marked change in technique from the one legendary promoter Al Franken used to pack the Sports activities Enviornment for his Sunkist indoor meets into the early 2000s, when observe (and subject) was a significant characteristic of Southern California’s sports activities panorama. Franken, who died three years in the past, placed on meets that had a three-ring-circus really feel, with dozens of occasions that includes highschool athletes and Olympic champions.
The motion was so quick and diversified, you could possibly blink and miss a world document. Which is why Franken’s son Don, who helped his father promote his occasions, is having bother embracing the Grand Slam sequence, the place eight races will probably be run in roughly three hours on every meet day.
“Too much damn dead time,” he mentioned. “There’s been always something going and it keeps track and field exciting. That’s not what’s hurting the sport. What’s hurting the sport is making sure track meets don’t last all day, that they’re faster-paced, they’re quick, exciting. And then integrating music, videos.
“Just bring it into the modern age. We have the greatest damn sport.”
Franken mentioned the game additionally wants extra promotion, starting on the faculty stage; extra deep-pocketed sponsors prepared to pay bigger prize-money purses; and extra inventive considering, which is why he welcomes Johnson’s concepts, if not the execution.
“Nobody has a clue how to promote the sport,” he mentioned. “It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to do it. It just takes getting down in the trenches and fighting for it and loving this sport.
“Let’s try new things. Let’s do fresh things. I’m all for what Michael Johnson is doing. All of these will contribute because it’s going to get money in the sport, it’s going to put new eyeballs on the sport, it’s going to get new fans.”
Not surprisingly, most of the athletes Johnson has recruited to his new circuit agree.
“Michael’s vision is clear,” mentioned McLaughlin-Levrone, a world record-holder and the primary athlete to signal on to Johnson’s program. “He’s exactly the leader the sport needs to break new ground. This is the step forward that track needs to take it to another level.”
Fisher, third in each the 5,000 and 10,000 meters within the Paris Olympics, referred to as Grand Slam Monitor “the future of the sport.”
The concept has already run into some headwinds, although, exactly due to the advertising and marketing failures and slim considering the sequence was created to deal with. Johnson had thought-about taking his sequence to London or Birmingham, England, this 12 months however finally selected to remain within the U.S. and Caribbean, a choice to which UK Athletics, the governing physique for observe and subject in the UK, didn’t object.
“We’re positive about Michael Johnson’s format,” Buckner mentioned. “They did approach us and we had a really good discussion.
“But,” he added, “if you don’t get an event right and you don’t budget for it properly, it can lose a lot of money quickly.”
If Johnson’s hunch is true, Grand Slam Monitor may show to be the best way athletes and promoters start bringing that cash — and the followers — again.
